Free How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel by Katharine Ashe Page A

and thanks, rousing blushes on swarthy cheeks. As they passed Jin, he set them to tasks they should have already been doing, and continued toward their captain.
    “Jonah, do you recall that little problem I mentioned last night that requires tending?” she said as he neared. The sailor before her pulled off his cap like a lackey addressing a lord and nodded eagerly.
    “Sure do, Cap’n mum. The head’s needin’ unstopperin’.”
    “Yes.” She offered a sympathetic tilt of her lips. “Things are bound to get uncomfortable if we leave it plugged up for long, aren’t they?”
    “Yes, mum! I’ll set right to it in a jiffy.” His head bobbed on his skinny neck and he scampered away.
    Jin stared at his back for a moment, then turned to the woman who sent a man off to clean the refuse hole with a happy grin. He gestured toward the forecastle.
    “What was that about?”
    Her brow lowered and she pushed her hat lower on it. “Good day to you too,” she muttered. “What’s got your goat? Or perhaps you’re always this ill-tempered.”
    “Ill-tempered? This from a woman who insults me every occasion she can manage, then avoids me on all others?”
    “I am not ill-tempered.” Her gaze flickered. “At least I wasn’t before you stepped on deck.”
    “What were those men doing? The wind is full in the sails. They ought to have been at the sheets holding her to a steady course, not singing like fools for your pleasure.”
    “The ship is running perfectly well,” she snapped. “As you can see.”
    “And if the wind had changed abruptly, we would be capsized by now.”
    “But it didn’t change and we are afloat,” Viola snapped. He was correct. But for a moment enjoying the simple company of her men and a relief from her too constant thoughts of this man, she’d been perfectly happy. And thoroughly irresponsible. “Are you questioning my knowledge of my ship?”
    “Only your handling of its crew. What sort of captain countenances a concert at full sail on a following sea?”
    “A captain who knows much more about her sailors than apparently you do. No surprise.” She moved to go around him and he stepped into her path. “Get out of my way, Seton, or I’ll take the butt of my pistol to your head.”
    His voice lowered. “Do not threaten a man with beating who knows well how to give as good as he has gotten, Miss Carlyle.”
    Something had changed, and for the first time since this man with a reputation for unbridled violence had come aboard her ship, she was frightened. Not by threat of violence to her. She didn’t believe he would harm her, not when he was calling her Miss Carlyle and intending to carry her back to her brother-in-law the earl in England. But the acute clarity had disappeared from his eyes, replaced by something quite different. Something heated and unsteady. On any other man she would think it uncertainty. Perhaps even confusion. On Jinan Seton—arrogant as the day was bright—it alarmed her.
    Her hands went damp and cold, her belly contrarily hot.
    She tried to shake it off. “If you call me that aboard my ship one more time, I will have you thrown over.”
    “If you continue to sail this ship as you are doing, we are all likely to take a swim together.”
    She eyed him narrowly, but it only increased the heat in her twisted belly. She crossed her arms.
    “If you must know, it is my birthday. The singing was a gift.”
    He appeared nonplussed. “Your birthday.”
    “Yes. I am five-and-twenty. As of today I have achieved my majority. Even in England, no man has authority over me now.”
    “Is that what this is about?” He gestured toward the sailors. “Asserting your authority over men?”
    “This is about sailing my vessel in the manner I see fit. Do you have a problem with that, sailor?”
    “I do when you put all aboard in danger.” He scanned her face, his enigmatic gaze by far the most dangerous thing aboard to Viola’s unsettled senses. “You treat them like